for a moment, we exist together, for a moment
On view at Bunnell Street Arts Center, in Homer, Alaska, February 2023. Works featured interactive and accessible elements including Braille exhibition material, audio descriptions, and touchable art pieces. This page is in progress, further image descriptions and details are being added regularly.
Three angled white walls of a gallery hold multiple artworks and the exhibition title in black text that reads, “KATIE IONE CRANEY, for a moment, we exist together, for a moment”.
Glaciers sing. Blueberries listen. Bodies long to/for touch. How does the well-being of more-than-human beings directly reflect that of humans? How is personhood defined? What makes a body? A boundary? Who determines otherness? Guided by how alive I feel near berry patches and glaciers, this body of work is an invitation to consider multiple ways of knowing and being, a safe space to feel vulnerable and intimate with place through touch, sound, and language. This work is a community of stories and interconnections, voices drawn together to share nonnormative forms of care, knowing, and access.
Many of these works are informed by and made in collaboration with artists, poets, scientists, thinkers, and wayfarers. The exhibition title was borne out of conversations with poet and printmaker Myrna Keliher with Expedition Press, about aliveness and the word “alive”— how verbs can bounce, vibrate, echo, and exist separately and together. In the cards made with Expedition Press, Braille is overlaid on the letterpress, along with many images throughout the show to share with non-visual past and future relatives. In thinking about ocularcentric culture and visual storytelling, I held an open submission for the installation “what did you see // how did you feel.” Over 50 participants sent images from Chukotka to Australia, Tunisia to the Brooks Range, often with very personal stories accompanying them. These stories become a living history, much like the pieces with words written in wax on blueberry-dyed fabric by some of my favorite writers, who challenge perceptions of being through their embodied language. What are the embodied languages of place? Do blueberries and ice bring one another into existence? How do blueberries listen and respond to changes in the land? How does care and attention affect and provide for mutual flourishing? What is ice singing from deep below the surface of a glacier high above the Arctic Circle? What does rapid shifting and change sound like, and who has the privilege to listen?
Accessibility is embedded throughout this work, though I acknowledge that not every piece can be fully accessed by every body. Access needs are specific to each person and must always remain open to revision and possibility. I see this work as a continuation, growing with every person who participates with it. I welcome you to gather with me in the berry patch. Help me put puzzles together. Share how you feel alive and take a card home with you. Consider how stories are shared and who they are for. Move through this space with an open mind and consider the spectrum of living beings and how access can be held, challenged, and continued.
for a moment, we exist together, for a moment is supported by an Adaptation and Innovation grant and Career Opportunity grant from Alaska State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Puffin Foundation, and the Rasmuson Foundation.
This exhibition has been informed by many. Special thanks to Bojana Coklyat, Shannon Finnegan, Myrna Keliher, Dr. Jen Rose Smith, JJJJJerome Ellis, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Ugo Nanni, Dr. Janelle Baker, Julie Cruikshank, Sam Lee, Amanda Cachia, M. Leona Godin, Georgina Kleege, X̲ʼunei Lance Twitchell, James G̲ooch Éesh Hart, K̲aachgóon Rochelle Smallwood, Natalie Diaz, Teju Cole, Andrea Nelson, Maddy Witek, Kelsey Aho, Sara Tabbert, Mandy Bernard, Raymond Antrobus, Ilya Kaminsky, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Talila “TL” Lewis, Amanda Leduc, Janine Allen, Mia Mingus, Robin Wall-Kimmerer, Björk, Sins Invalid, Tangled Arts, Jenni House Artist Residency, and my Great-Grandmother, Mary Etta, for inspiring endless questioning of how to approach and share this work.
Recording equipment rests on a partially snow-covered Kongsvegen Glacier. A solar panel connects to a dark box and is strapped to a wooden crate. A long blue tube coils in the snow next to a bright orange wand, marking the location. Photo: Coline Bouchayer
Breath of Arctic Glaciers Sound Description
Recorded by Ugo Nanni, 1072’ below the surface of Kongsvegen Glacier in Svalbard
1-minute track:
Enclosed and submerged underwater, a pressurized humming overlaps with an erratic scratching needle of a nearby vinyl record. Distant thunder echoes in a cavernous chamber. Small pebbles or sand sluff off a crumbling wall. Suddenly, the earth gives out underfoot to bending wobbling waves of dense metal rolling, reverberating, and folding into itself. The vibrations fade back to the consistent crackling, skipping record needle. Further away, thunder bounces off darkness.
A view of “what did you see // how did you feel” - an installation of submitted photographs with selected image descriptions mounted on the wall. Photographs are printed on transparencies and placed in plastic card cases. Some hang from the ceiling and others are in small white boxes to be looked through.